Buffalo Wild Wings 2014 Annual Report Download - page 20

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may increase at any time, thereby further increasing our costs. The dollar amount of claims that we actually experience under
our workers' compensation and general liability insurance, for which we carry high per-claim deductibles, may also increase at
any time, thereby further increasing our costs. Also, the decreased availability of property and liability insurance has the
potential to negatively impact the cost of premiums and the magnitude of uninsured losses.
Our current insurance may not provide adequate levels of coverage against claims.
We currently maintain insurance customary for businesses of our size and type. However, there are types of losses we
may incur that cannot be insured against or that we believe are not economically reasonable to insure, such as losses due to
natural disasters. Such damages could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.
We are dependent on information technology and any material failure of that technology could impair our ability to
efficiently operate our business.
We rely on information systems across our operations, including, for example, point-of-sale processing in our
restaurants, management of our supply chain, collection of cash and credit and debit card payments, payment of obligations,
and various other processes and procedures. Our ability to efficiently manage our business depends significantly on the
reliability and capacity of these systems. The failure of these systems to operate effectively, problems with maintenance,
upgrading or transitioning to replacement systems, or a breach in security of these systems could cause delays in customer
service, reduce efficiency in our operations, require significant investment to remediate the issue, or cause negative publicity
that could damage our brand. Significant capital investments might be required to remediate any problems.
If we are unable to maintain our rights to use key technologies of third parties, our business may be harmed.
We rely on certain technology licensed from third parties, and may be required to license additional technology in the
future for use in managing our Internet sites and providing related services to users and customers. These third-party
technology licenses may not continue to be available to us on acceptable commercial terms or at all. The inability to enter into
and maintain any of these technology licenses could significantly harm our business, financial condition and operating results.
We may not be able to protect our trademarks, service marks or trade secrets.
We place considerable value on our trademarks, service marks and trade secrets. We actively enforce and defend our
marks and if violations are identified, take appropriate action to preserve and protect our goodwill in our marks. We attempt to
protect our sauce recipes as trade secrets by, among other things, requiring confidentiality agreements with our sauce suppliers
and executive officers. However, we cannot be sure that we will be able to successfully enforce our rights under our marks or
prevent competitors from misappropriating our sauce recipes. We can also not be sure that: (i) our marks are valuable, (ii) using
our marks does not, or will not, violate others’ marks, (iii) the registrations of our marks would be upheld if challenged, or (iv)
we would not be prevented from using our marks in areas of the country where others might have already established rights to
them. Any of these uncertainties could have an adverse effect on us and our expansion strategy.
ITEM 1B. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS
None.